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SCEA: PSN "As Good, If Not A Better Experience" Than Live

The PlayStation Network has come a long way in the past few years, and although it remains free, some believe the $50 for Microsoft's Xbox Live service is worth the money because it remains a better experience.

However, according to what SCEA Senior Vice President of Publisher Relations, Rob Dyer, told Industry Gamers, the Network is the easier, more "egalitarian" service. His comments are interesting, because they relate to how third-party developers and publishers view the progress of the PSN, and why more are starting to side with the PS3's service. Also, because hardware sales continue to rise, this also helps the download numbers; after all, if the service is free, a PS3 owner only needs to hook up the machine, sign up for a free account, and go. Said Dyer:

“When I first started here [at SCEA] two years ago, it was slow and cumbersome and we were really struggling to put any kind of a dent into Xbox Live. But PSN has come a long way in just a couple years. What we're now finding is we're at par and offering as good if not a better experience; and publishers are putting a lot of content on our system now that they can't put on Xbox Live. And having been a publisher on the other side, I can say that PSN is a lot more egalitarian. It's easier to get stuff up, it's easier to get it promoted and easier to get it to your consumer, versus what you have with Xbox Live."

He went on to say that it doesn't take as much convincing to get publishers to put their content on the PSN these days, primarily due to the number of PS3s that are currently in consumers' homes. As of now, the total worldwide count is up to 33.5 million and that's the kind of number game makers aren't likely to ignore. Dyer ends by asking the rhetorical question, "So if I'm a developer, which system should I make the content for?"

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Legacy Comment System (136 posts)

This is true. Playing on both PSN and XBL, the only edge XBL has is cross-game-chat...and i don't use it that often anymore. I don't care for the facebook, last.fm, or all the other stuff; I could get it from my PC

1 includes things like messaging, friends lists, trophies, multi-player games and all that jazz.2 now includes not only games, wall papers, themes, video content, music (depending on your region), PSP content, but also through NetFlix you have online video streaming.3 now also includes online gaming, friends and online content purchases.

What more is there to want from your online gaming network? Oh, yeah, that non-core function cross game voice chat. How such a peripheral feature has become so definitive in so many minds I will never know. But quite apart from anything else, it's most certainly not enough to justify $50 a year subscriptions.

I think you misunderstood my post. I wasn't trying to imply that XBL was better because of Cross-Game-Chat. I meant that its the only notable feature XBL has. People see it as something that separates PSN from XBL and it's the core reason why people think XBL is better. If it was on PS3, too, no one would say anything special about it.

As I said, I hardly use it on the 360 at all, so even if it shows up at Sony's doorstep, I wouldn't care for it.

@highlanderi guess most xbox users value their cross game chat because they prefer to close them off to their own circle of friends rather than branching out to the entire community. I mean if you're going to play a game online, ie FPS, you should speak to your team mates and not someone who isnt playing in the same game or room.

Disclaimer: I'm a PS3 fanboy and I don't own a 360, so just because I'm about to speak highly about Live doesn't make me a traitor.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest here, Live is still the best multiplayer online platform.* The Live Parties make finding and creating multiplayer matches between friends a lot easier.* Cross game invites means you don't have to launch a game to invite someone to play.* Cross game chat (sorry, Highlander, but it IS a valuable feature to heavy multiplayer users)

Other features that Live has that I'd like to see coming to PSN:* Cloud computing game saves (the game saves are saved on both your console and on the servers)* Faster patch downloads (for some reason, patching a game on Live is a 10 second job)

General features I'd like to see on the PS3:* Generate a database of games that you launch, that the user can manage (as in, remove rentals from this list once they've been played and returned)* "Check for updates" - use the above database - lets you check for patch updates for any / all of your games without needing to launch it.* Background patch download* Web developer API to access PSN messaging / trophies / owned game database. By all means require sign-ups to this, so that their servers don't get hammered by every wannabe web dev out there who has no idea what the word "caching" means, but for the love of $deity stop making us parse HTML.

Now don't get me wrong: Nothing of what I've listed in this post do I consider a "core" feature. I am very happy with the PSN thus far, and I don't miss any of the features I described that Live has got.I would, however, possibly opt to pay for those features should Sony implement them as a premium subscription option.

Use Home, you can set up parties of friends live and launch directly into a multi-player game - assuming of course your game supports it.

* Cross game invites.

See the previous response regarding Home.

* Cross game chat

No amount of rationalization will alter the fact that this is little more than a nice to have feature. We all have phones, perhaps we should use them?

* Cloud computing game saves

This is a relatively new feature on XBL that Sony has also talked about implementing, not sure this is something you can use to differentiate between them.

* Faster patch downloads (for some reason, patching a game on Live is a 10 second job)

Um, well, there is no way that a 350MB game patch is going to download in 10 seconds, so I think you'll find that the speed of download for a game patch will depend entirely on the size of the patch. There are plenty of game patches for PS3 games that download in seconds because they are small, just as there are plenty that are larger.

* Background patch download

This is already there if the patch is delivered via the PS Store. If it's only delivered when you start the game you can't background it, but then that's not a Sony thing, that's a publisher thing. It certainly helps publishers make applying patches mandatory.

Cloud based saves have already been mentioned in connection with the as yet unannounced premium PSN services, as has cross game voice chat (which I still consider pointless, and if implementing it negatively impacts any of my games I will be severely pissed).

I don't think you'll find Sony opening up an API into anything that they even remotely consider to be proprietary or in any way security related. Sony is rightly concerned with maintaining it's security.Last edited by TheHighlander on 2/25/2010 11:08:28 AM

Home doesn't even come close to qualifying as a replacement for Live Parties or Cross-Game Invites, because you can't join Home while playing a game. You can join a Live Party while playing a game, and get invited into a different game.

Whether cloud game saves are new or not doesn't matter - it's a feature that's infinitely useful, and PSN lacks it.

I'll agree with you on the patch downloads - I don't know why I've never seen huge patches on XBL - maybe it's related to the security architecture you mentioned in a different post.Being a geek I don't mind progress bars - hell, I love them - but not everybody is like me.

When have a patch ever been delivered via the Store? I'm not talking about expansions or addon content, I'm talking about a version update. There's no reason why a patch couldn't download in the background in the same way most games seem to allow other games to download in the background.Obviously I don't expect the patch to be INSTALLED, but DOWNLOADED? No excuse.

Your API argument also makes no sense; see Blizzard and the WoW Armory, see MS and XBL, and I'm sure there's other examples. There's absolutely zero security risk by allowing us to access an XML feed of a person's trophies and games (unless a person's privacy settings blocks it, of course), because it's READ ONLY.I have hopes that Sony's PSN expansion will make them realise the need to open PSN stats up to developers, if we're to believe their marketing talk for the X10 then they are realising that the community and the people are important.

Home doesn't even come close to qualifying as a replacement for Live Parties or Cross-Game Invites, because you can't join Home while playing a game. You can join a Live Party while playing a game, and get invited into a different game.

Whether cloud game saves are new or not doesn't matter - it's a feature that's infinitely useful, and PSN lacks it.

I'll agree with you on the patch downloads - I don't know why I've never seen huge patches on XBL - maybe it's related to the security architecture you mentioned in a different post.Being a geek I don't mind progress bars - hell, I love them - but not everybody is like me.

When have a patch ever been delivered via the Store? I'm not talking about expansions or addon content, I'm talking about a version update. There's no reason why a patch couldn't download in the background in the same way most games seem to allow other games to download in the background.Obviously I don't expect the patch to be INSTALLED, but DOWNLOADED? No excuse.

Your API argument also makes no sense; see Blizzard and the WoW Armory, see MS and XBL, and I'm sure there's other examples. There's absolutely zero security risk by allowing us to access an XML feed of a person's trophies and games (unless a person's privacy settings blocks it, of course), because it's READ ONLY.I have hopes that Sony's PSN expansion will make them realise the need to open PSN stats up to developers, if we're to believe their marketing talk for the X10 then they are realising that the community and the people are important.

Why is it that my thoughts on APIs make so little sense? which console has been successfully hacked and is home to torrented game images? So far Sony's tight control on their system has yielded exactly zero successful hacks.

Home with game launching allows you and friends to meet up in home and launch a multi-player session of your favorite (supported) game directly from Home.

You can't be seriously likening a read-only WEB SCRIPT ACCESSIBLE ONLY FROM A COMPUTER'S BROWSER to the lack of hardware security that the 360 has got.The reason why the PS3 hasn't been hacked is because the hardware is the most secure system anyone has ever built (and also the OS doesn't have exploits in it), it has nothing to do with accessing information stored on Sony's servers.

Live Parties allow you to join and chat with a bunch of people while playing an entirely different game, and then receive requests to launch a multiplayer match for any game.Likening this to Home is just wrong.

I agree with @Belazor's comments - the PSN has made incredible strides in the shorter time it has had than the XBL, but there is still a long way to go. And inviting friends from Home is not a good solution for me because I seem to always have to download a huge chunk of data every time I log in to home (even otherwise it takes a while to boot up and get you where you can send out invites) - that's just too much time - I should just be able to press the PS button from a game, say invite to party, select the friends I want to invite and be done with it.

That's just it: They tell themselves it's better BECAUSE they pay for it. Same reason, after getting 3 RROD's, they talk to trash about the other product, instead. Strange, but even stranger is they feel the need to tell others, so that by deluding others, somehow it helps them delude their selves.

By 'egalitarian' I think what he's getting at is that for publishers of content, the PSN is a level playing field, so everyone get's a fair shake of the stick when it comes to placement and promotion on the PSN. MS, I believe, sells publishers access and effectively sells favors to place things more prominently. I would also not be surprised to learn that MS offered preferential treatment for it's favored partners. In that way, PSN is more equal for publishers - egalitarian.

Yes, and I'm not sure that Natal will do anything to alter that. Natal isn't a replacement for the core console, and considering the ambition they have placed on it's capabilities any game that uses Nata will have to devote some serious CPU time to handling the data coming from the Natal hardware. I don't think that the 360 hardware can accept a significant new load and still push out games of the same performance or quality. From that point of view, I don't think Natal will affect Xbox360 core gamers.

this is just a debate that will go on and on and never stop.i love psn not cause of the feats i get but cause i can play online with friends for free.that's one of the reason why i don't like xbl.why should i have to pay online to play with friends, that's just dumb.i wouldn't mind paying for cross game chat part system etc as long as i can still play the games i have for free online.

the thing i want psn to have though is the party system like xbl, but i don't care to much for cross game chat.psn has come along way for sure big time.they just need to make the psn store some what equal in all other countries. like adding same movies in all countries, same themes, etc stuff like that.so ppl in other countries can experience what another countries has in their store.another thing i wish psn do is speed up the content u download.cause i can download the same content on xbl and xbl downloads quicker.last thing i wish Sony would allow is multiple content to download at the same time.Last edited by Bloodysilence19 on 2/25/2010 12:06:05 AM

SIGH!when will the willy waiving end?anyway, that is the largest steaming pile i have ever heard!downloads are always faster for me off XBLA, there a smaller size sometimes that helps with download limits, people who play online actually use a head set and actually work as a team.plus i have not had to put up with any racist brats on XBLA. granted i dont use it much again because of my download usage but when i do, i dont get the "a dingo stole my baby" remarks every 2 seconds.

Well as preposterous a your comment was (IMHO) you crossed over into clear fantasy with this gem "plus i have not had to put up with any racist brats on XBLA".

Sorry, what? Did XBL suddenly undergo a cleansing? The last time I played on XBL it was populated with foul mouthed, racist, sexist, everything else-ist kids with volume issues and no inhibitions about swearing.

even if it is at lease M$ does something about it!you get caught speaking like that you get kicked off.MW2 a perfect example you cheat on XBLA you get your console banned.sony?sony could not give a rats a$$.yea PSN is better with all the cheaters roaming free!

even if it is at lease M$ does something about it!you get caught speaking like that you get kicked off.MW2 a perfect example you cheat on XBLA you get your console banned.sony?sony could not give a rats a$$.yea PSN is better with all the cheaters roaming free!

I love that the PSN is free, I think if i'm paying for a 60+ game taht i shouldn't have to pay more just to play the game online plus I'm already paying out the nose for great internet connection. My friends who swear live is so much better cause you pay for the service really do make no sense especially when I'm playing on PSN and they are complaining that they are waiting for another maintence on live to work properly?

Amyone else notice that you hear more and more about live have "maintence issues" my friends complain about it alot, i surely wouldn't want to pay for a service that has a crap load of problems.

As I'm browsing through the Playstation store, i just thought of something. They should allow you to manage your Downloads list. Mine only has about 168 downloads, but it gets annoying sifting through all of them when you need to re-download some stuff. Would have nice to be able to organize your purchased content. Separate it from the junk and the demos you'll never download again.

Totally agree with that Jawknee. Fortunately though I have not had to sort through that many items yet.

You are correct johnld; I think (or it was my understanding) that Jawknee meant more in depth sorting options in that section.

I too have had to sift through numeral things to only get at a few things I was searching for cLoudou.

Yeah, I had thought of that too actually. Something like in the way people can sort out pics or music in different categories or even make lists. Something such as: Demos, Disc Based Add-On Content, Downloaded Games, Downloaded Game Add-On Content and the like being grouped together, WITH the added ability to make customized lists/groupings probably being very appreciated and useful.

the psn is just as good as live,, i just want to be able to talk to one of my friends playing another game... its that simple... and that much of a difference... what else can xbots say when sony gets that?? lol nothing.... and my ps3 messed up!@!! i had to drive 2hours out of town... just to score a 250gb ps3 they are sold out of Ps3's in the central valley in california.. everywhere!! this is good news and bad news.... im just glad i got mine intime for heavy rain and GOW 3!!!!!

Better still, both of you play the same game. Or use Home. If you simply want to chat to a friend in another country, fire up Home, and do it there.Last edited by TheHighlander on 2/25/2010 12:45:12 PM

Oh hell no. Not Home. Not for me anyway. I'll use my Sony keypad before I use Home to chat. My friends are all in the States and usually chatting in-game is exactly what I do. But seeing them online and being able to chat right away would be sweet. I ain't paying for it, but it'd be sweet.

i would pay a subscription fee on the PSN if..the bandwidth was better and didnt keep disconnecting at peek times and had cross game chat..on LIVE i get good bandwidth i get very little disconnects and cross game chat!

Likewise about those two factors Snaaaake, also the Blu-ray movie capabilities also swayed me quite a bit.

I mean personally I can't compare the PSN to XBL but I'm satisfied with PSN overall thus far. The Xbox seemed to definetly have an edge over PS2 online supported games/capabilities though no? I'm solely basing this on reports and the number of online games for the original Xbox being more vast. I have been with Sony ever since the first grey box; other than a few exclusives on the XB360 and Wii I haven't been swayed or compelled to point of purchasing either at this point though. I place no hate on them, however if it's indeed true that certain corporations' systems/consoles are holding some multiplat PS3 games back and resort to monopolizing tactics it's disappointing to say the least.

FFXIII is getting the reviews it does for numerous reasons. Personally, I'm still surprised that it gets as good a score s it does. I have read several reviews that had the game solidly in the 7-7.5 range but them gave it an extra point for being so pretty to look at - ooh, so pretty!

Let's hope someone at SE and Tri-Ace has an attack of common sense and decides to fix a game released on another platform when that game is ported to a new platform. Better yet, when there is a problem with a game, how about acknowledging it instead of denying it and offering a useless game disc warranty exchange?

I got Star Ocean 4, and I'm enjoying it - as much as I can. Now I am on Planet Roak but can go no further because the game freezes ad the start almost every battle I enter. It's a soft fail so I can use the PS button to quit, but it's unplayable. Similar freezing happens at other times and the battle freezing happens to a lesser degree on the other planets. Despite there being a fair number of people online who are aware of this problem - now, SE steadfastly refuses to recognize the issue. Whatever the issue is, it doesn't affect every one, and it;s not limited to a single model or generation of PS3.

If I were reviewing SO4 instead of playing it for myself, it would currently have a review score of 8/10 with a penalty of -10 for having a game breaking bug that's not being addressed. Leaving it with a fabulous -2 out of 10 (take that Metacritic)...

I guess they had it coming, what with their attempt to give the game a "FPS atmosphere". Am I the only one abhorred by the possibility that at some point during the games development, the production team actually sat down and discussed how they could make the game appeal to western audiences by giving it a FPS framework. They probably got their ideas from COD...just blackens my heart.

The facebook app on the 360 is a joke, you basically do the same on the PC, wat's the point when you can't even post your achievements? When you can automatically post your trophies and any purchases made on your facebook page with the PS3, now that I can't do with my PC. Seriously paying for LIVE is a joke!

My only gripe with the psn is that i think they should do away with the bluetooth headsets and just have 1 usb headset for all because in my opinion the voice chat can be nothing short of diabolical, cough warhawk cough. And no my headset is fine seeing as its the official sony one.

Is Xbox Live worth the $50 a year? All depends on what your preferences are. Me personally, no and here's why.

The whole point of Xbox Live and PSN is to PLAY ONLINE. Xbox Live was laggy for the most part for me, PSN is solid. Xbox Live cost me $50 a year, PSN is FREE.

I want Cross Game Chat, I also want Party Chat, 2 features I miss from when I gamed on Xbox 360. Am I willing to pay for these services if they come to PSN, sure. Do I WANT to pay for them, no. I believe they should be free services but if Sony decides to charge for the service it better be cheap, or have a good subscription with discounts or whatever the rumor is.

From my experiences Xbox Live is only "BETTER" than PSN because of it's "FEATURES" not because of it's online service. As I said the whole point of Live and PSN is to PLAY ONLINE in which I get a better experince on PSN than when I had Live.

First off, I agree with everyone that I prefer PSN to Live, even though I pay for Live.

The only thing I like better about Live is that the games or patches I download over there download and install in a blink of an eye while on the PSN it takes a lot longer because you first have to download and then install whatever you are downloading.

The only patches that can be delivered in 'the blink of an eye' are very small ones. A 350MB patch for Burnout Paradise will take just as long on either console to download. The difference is that the PS3 doesn't background download a patch unless it's delivered as an item via the PS Store. So when a game has a patch, you have to wait for it to download and install.

@Highlander, what you say is true - it should depend on the size of the patch and XBL does not support background download of patches either, but I don't know how they do it but they have never had a patch in the last 3 years I've had an Xbox where the patch took more than a minute at max to download AND install. PSN seems to take more - but then this might just be due to the difference in architecture or something.

To everyone speaking on the fact that the downloading of patches and probably downloads in general on the 360 are faster:

You all have to remember that Microsoft has been pushing for this whole digital download revolution for a while. It would make their DRM antics much more fruitful and give them more control over things. That being said I am pretty confident that they have in place redundant servers or utilise a type of network that is similar in architecture to P2P networks.

If there are any network admins or CCNPs around they could go into great detail about how this type of thing would work and give faster download times.

- Group voice chat ability with other PSN users no matter what I'm doing (playing game, browsing internet, watching movie, etc). I don't want to have to sit in a chat room just to talk with friends. *This would cover cross-game chat as well of course.

- Mute option via PSN (similar to blocking user). I'm tired of all the racist people I encounter on PSN. If I block that user on PSN, they cannot send me messages. What good is that when I can still hear them in game? XBL allows users to mute other XBL users, why hasn't Sony offered this yet?

- Rating system. We need to be able to rate other PSN users. I love that I can rate other XBL users as well as submit abuse reports right from the dashboard.

These are the 3 things that PSN needs include free of charge to surpass XBL. If I have to pay then it will be on par.

The only thing I would want from PSN is the ability to pay to change ur PSN user name (even for a fee), like XBL have. Besides that, I could care less about cross game chat. we got netflix which was the nest thing I wanted.Last edited by Superman915 on 2/25/2010 1:08:41 PM

Yes, this would be nice, as would the ability to have a custom avatar picture!

A premium PSN service I would pay for in a heart beat is cloud based storage of game saves. I cannot tell you how irritating it is to have a game that locks me to a specific seat to play it. If I begin a game on the PS3 my wife uses (let's say Star Ocean 4) and then want to move that to another PS3 - such as the one on my desk - I am hosed. If I wanted to play a game at a friends house to show him/her my progress in a game - hosed. Hardware failure requires me to buy another PS3, I'm pretty hosed on those protected saves. Why the developers feel the need to lock the save to anything other than the PSN id is beyond me. If Sony ever comes up with a way to resolve this by pushing saves up to the PSN, I'll be among the first in line to pay for the service.

I don't think you will get your own music in all games unless you are willing to use your own music player. Sony has already made the functionality available in the Dev Kits and firmware, it's up to developers to use it.

i wish you were able to join friends' games like the xbox has "join session in progress" on PSN. that would be great, along with being able to change your name and custom avatars. the avatars PSN has are just horrible. also a bigger comment section or whatnot (maybe showing your home character on your gamercard?)

but alas, wishful thinking...still love PSN though.
i'm torn on whether to get bad company 2 on ps3 or xbox though...:(
i ran the demos side by side and the 360 has better colors and textures, but i have more friends on PS3...what should i do?

XBL is better atm and anyone who doesn't think so is crazy.Cross game chat/private chat are huge among other things live has to offer that psn doesn't.People saying anyone who pays for live is an idiot I bet will be the first to pay for sony's premium service for cross game chat.I know this is a ps3 site,but g'damn,you guys bash teh xbox wayy too muchh...Ohh well,Back to grandia or ff13 ^_^.

i know its the wrong spot to be commenting. like to know if people are getting kicked off psn or cant sign off and getting this Error 8001050F. cause right now everywhere ive checked its major global issue right now on psn.heres a site talking about ithttp://kotaku.com/5482328/ps3s-suffering-from-global-network-lockdown